1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor and a manufacturing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC), a multilayer chip electronic component, is capable of being used in various electronic devices, due to advantages such as a small size, high capacitance, ease of mounting, or the like.
For example, the multilayer ceramic capacitor is used in a chip-shaped condenser mounted on printed circuit boards of various electronic products including display devices, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs) and the like, for example, as well as including computers, smartphones, mobile phones, and the like, to serve to charge and discharge electricity therein.
The multilayer ceramic capacitor may have a structure in which a plurality of dielectric layers and internal electrodes having different polarities are alternately stacked while being interposed between the dielectric layers.
In this case, since the dielectric layers have piezoelectric properties, when a direct current (DC) voltage or an alternating current (AC) voltage is applied to the multilayer ceramic capacitor, a piezoelectric phenomenon may be generated between the internal electrodes, such that a volume of a ceramic body is expanded and contracted according to a frequency, thereby generating periodic vibrations.
The vibrations are transmitted to a printed circuit board through external electrodes and a solder connecting the external electrodes of the multilayer ceramic capacitor to the printed circuit board, such that the entire printed circuit board becomes a sound reflective surface to generate a vibration sound to be a noise.
The vibration sound may be in an audible frequency region of 20 to 20,000 Hz, causing listener discomfort, and the vibration sound causing listener discomfort refers to an acoustic noise.
Recently, in electronic devices, since acoustic noise generated in the multilayer ceramic capacitor as described above may be significant due to a decreased noise of components, research into a technology of effectively decreasing the acoustic noise generated in the multilayer ceramic capacitor has been required.
As a method of decreasing the acoustic noise as described above, a method of attaching frame-shaped metal terminals to both end surfaces of the multilayer ceramic capacitor and mounting the multilayer ceramic capacitor on the printed circuit board so as to be spaced apart therefrom by a predetermined interval has been disclosed.
However, in order to decrease the acoustic noise to a predetermined level using the metal terminals, it is necessary to increase a thickness of the metal terminals to a predetermined standard or more.
In this case, since the increase in the thickness of the metal terminals as described above may increase a thickness of a component in which the multilayer ceramic capacitor is mounted, the increase in the thickness of the metal terminals may not be applied to a product having a limitation in the thickness thereof.
The following Patent Document 1 discloses a method of decreasing acoustic noise transmitted from a multilayer ceramic capacitor to a printed circuit board, using a metal terminal, but fails to disclose a method of decreasing a size (thickness) of a component having the multilayer ceramic capacitor mounted thereon.